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A Commemorative Discourse 



WORK AND CHARACTER 

OF 

Ulysses Simpson Grant, 

Delivered before the Citizens of Watertown, 
August 8, 1885, 

BY C. L WOODWORTH, D. D. 



The Prayer Offered on the Same Occasion 



LUTHER T. TOWNSEND, D.D. 



BOSTON: 

Beacon Press : Thomas Todd, Printer, 

No. I Somerset Street. 

1885. 




;,:' 



l 



A Commemorative Discourse 



WORK AND CHARACTER 



Ulysses Simpson Grant, 



Delivered before the Citizens of VVatertown, 
August 8, 1885, 



BY C. L. WOODWORTH, D, D. 
1 * 



ALSO, 



The Prayer Offered on the Same Occasion 



LUTHER T. TOWNSEND, D.D. 



BOSTON: 

Beacon Press : Thomas Todd, Printer, 

No. I Somerset Street. 

1885. 



E-672 
VS7 



Watertown, August 12, 18S5. 
Rev. C. L. WoodiLwrth, D.D., and Rev. L. T. Towiisetid, D.D.: 

Dear Sirs: The Committee havins; in charge the arrangements for the Memo- 
rial Service of General Grant on the Sth inst., in our town, propose to print the 
eulogy, and also the prayer which was offered, for public distribution. Will you, 
gentlemen, please furnish copies of the same, and accept the thanks of the Com- 
mittee for your services on that occasion ? 

A. L. Richards, C. W. Smith, 

A. O. Davidson, John Hallahan, 

Edward Fitzwilliams, Geo. E. Teele, 
Alfred Hosmer, Oliver Shaw, 

Samuel S. Gleason, J. G. Barker, 
Benj. H. Dow, Wm. H. Ingraham, 

O. W. DiMicK, Charles Brigham, 

Geo. F. Robinson, J. H. Hartwell, 

James F. Lynch, Committee, 



Boston, August 12, 18S5. 
A. L. Richards, Esq. : 

Dear Sir : I have your note of this date in behalf of the Committee which 
you represent, requesting for publication a copy of the address which I had the 
honor to deliver on the occasion of General Grant's funeral, August 8. Thank- 
ing you and the Committee for the opportunity to prepare and to deliver the 
address which your invitation made possible, I now cheerfully put it at your dis- 
posal for the purpose named in your note. 

Very respectfully yours, 

C. L. Woodworth. 
A. L. Richards and sixteen others, Committee. 



Gentlemen : I have the honor of being in the receipt of yours dated August 
12th requesting for publication a copy of the prayer offered at the Grant Memo- 
rial Service. If in your judgment its publication in connection with the admir- 
able address delivered by Dr. Woodworth will in any measure contribute to the 
interest of the pamphlet as a commemorative document, I can interpose no 
objection and herewith place at your disposal a copy of the same. 

Very respectfully yours, 

Luther T. Townsend. 
A. L. Richards, 
A. O. Davidson, 
Edward Fitzwilliams, and others. 

Watertown, September 12, i88j. 



PRAYER 

BY LUTHER T. TOWNSEND, D.D. 



Infinite and ever blessed God, our Heavenly Father, who hast ordained 
and overruled all the great events of this world and the universe, and who 
likewise art not unmindful of the fall of a sparrow, it is becoming in us at 
all times and under all circumstances to recognize Thee and acknowledge 
our dependence upon Thy mercy. And whether standing amid the stirring 
scenes of life, or the quiet of death, amid joy or grief, we may well implore Thy 
presence and Thy blessing. 

With great multitudes in this and other lands, who at this hour are met 
to honor the dead, we would thank Thee for such a disposition of events 
as has permitted us to have our birth and our homes in this land of unmatched 
opportunities, where all are free and where all may be enlightened in intel- 
lectual and religious truth; and for such a disposition of events as gave to 
this nation and brought to the attention of the whole world the great man 
whose body this day is committed to the tomb. 

And as Thou canst order all events for Thy glory and our good, we pray 
that the lessons from the life and death of our great soldier, for whom more 
symbols of mourning are now to be seen than have ever before been displayed 
in this world for any one man, whose funeral procession today consists of 
towns and cities and states and nations, even the nations of all civilized lands, 
may be deeply impressed upon the hearts of all our people. 

May the quiet modesty of that heroic man tend to check the noisy 
impatience that clamors for honor and position, and may it teach our people 
to work and wait patiently for the divine unfoldings of events, we meanwhile 
rendering with all diligence the service of today, letting the morrow care 
for the things of itself. 

May our people likewise be impressed with the lessons often given, but 
not always heeded, that the highest and grandest successes are not quickly 
or easily gained, but must be reached by a patient and trustful continuance 
in well-doing, and that God will delight to pave the way to honorable prefer- 
ment, even from the humblest walks of life, when the times demand leaders 
and when men are found who are seeking to do Thy will. 

And especially may the lesson be deeply engraved upon all hearts that 
sterling integrity is pleasing to Thee and will be honored of man. And may 
we not soon forget that he who was willing to yield the last farthing, seeking 
in sickness and pain new fields of toil in which to make provision for his 
family, rather than a creditor should suffer loss, has thus proved himself 
not only mighty on the field of battle, but equally grand in civil life. We 
bless Thee for the grace that enabled him to stand without yielding to tempta- 
tion, whereby a shadow would have been cast upon his fair name, and the 
honors conferred at this hour would be far less. 



Hast not Thou ordained that in both time and eternity that they, who 
honor Thee, Thou wilt honor; and they who despise Thee and Thy righteous- 
ness shall be lightly esteemed? 

May our people also be impressed with the beauty and sacredness 
of home life as Thou hast ordained it, and as now brought before the eyes 
of the world, where the wife and mother is both queen and nurse, where 
the wearied and sick man seeks and finds repose, where children can find 
protection and inspiration, and where even death knits the hearts of all 
in a fonder and more loving embrace. 

And in other ways may this event that calls us together become under 
the overruling of Thy providence a great national blessing. 

By it may our land be securer in its union than ever before; may this 
hour, passed amid the solemn thoughts of death, make men, east and west, 
north and south, better citizens, nobler patriots, and more devout Christians; 
and may the bond which this day unites, under the influence of Thy spirit, 
millions of hearts in this common grief and service, be extended until all 
English-speaking people shall feel the glow and thrill of fraternal love — 
even until all nations shall move forward under the sublime conception that 
they are made of one blood and therefore should seek peace, be governed 
by Christian charity, and learn war no more. 

We humbly pray for Thy blessing upon the family of our great soldier 
and citizen. And especially commend to Thy tender mercy the wife who 
made the home of the distinguished dead a delight, who shared his successes 
and helped gain the respect and honors now cheerfully conferred upon him. 
Comfort her in her great bereavement, give strength in this hour of prostration, 
and be Thou ever near in the days and nights of her future loneliness. 

We commend to Thee likewise all who are suffering a like grief. May 
it please Thee greatly to bless those whose thoughts of the war and their 
losses are awakened afresh today, and whose response to the beating drum 
are deep sighs and falling tears; especially those mothers who never cease 
to mourn for their dead sons, and wives whose husbands never returned, 
and whose loss is still the burden of their lives. Known only to Thee is the 
depth of their sorrow. God pity, God bless them ! 

And we are moved to commend to Thy fatherly goodness the family 
of our friend and neighbor whose death has just cast an additional shadow 
over our homes and our hearts. May the infinite compassion not fail the 
widow and fatherless in this hour of their greatest need.* 

We pray for the divine favor upon our town ; grant prosperity to its 
people; may good-will and Christian charity, temperance, and virtue, and 
all things that make homes happy and communities prosperous be granted 
unto us and unto our children after us. 

And now may God bless us in all the exercises of the hour. May Thy 
grace be given in full measure to Thy servant who is selected to speak for 
us in praise of the dead ; by the inspiration of his words and of this hour may 
we all be lifted to a higher and nobler plain of Christian thought and en- 
deavor — becoming, in all things, more like Thyself — through our ever 
blessed Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ, to whom, with the Father and the 
Holy Spirit, be glory and dominion world without end. Amen. 



•This reference is to Mr. George K. Snow, who was drowned, while bathing, August 9th. 



A COMMEMORATIVE DISCOURSE. 



Soldiers ; Citizefis ; Ladies and Getitlemen : 

We stand, today, within the shadows of a great national 
sorrow. The air is filled with the presence and the memory 
of the Saviour of his country. The great soldier has fought 
his last battle, and entered into the rest — 

"Where the war-drum throbs no longer: 
And the battle-flags are furled." 

Fifty millions of people reverently and tenderly, like be- 
reaved children, are waiting around his open coffin. One 
more vision of that precious form, which so often rode the 
crest of battle and led the hosts of God to victory, before 
it descends into the darkness and silence of the tomb. 

The citizen whom we mourn was not the property or the 
inheritance of any church, or nation, or time. His name 
filled two hemispheres. And the Eastern, as well as the 
Western, has watched his departure, and answers, in words 
of sympathy and sorrow, the event which bereaves mankind. 

Stricken with the common grief, at the going out of this 
great life, we are met to express our sense of the loss which 
the Republic has sustained ; and to add our estimate of the 
value of the man, and of the work which he performed for his 
generation and his kind. 

History is too often the mere narration of events, with- 
out regard for the motives or the living forces out of which 
they have been evolved. And I know of nothing in litera- 
ture that is more barren in interest, or more unprofitable in 
its lessons. History has value, as it reveals the secret 
springs of character, and accounts for the forces which burst 
forth into those mighty movements that shape the destiny 
of empires, and of men. 



8 

It would be easy to sketch the main events in the life of 
General Grant. And this has already been done, not only in 
the labored memoirs, but by the popular press throughout the 
world. The story of his humble home at Mt. Pleasant, on 
the banks of the Ohio, where he was born, April 27, 1822, is 
familiar to us all. We know that his parents were simple- 
hearted, modest. Christian people. We know that this boy 
was a tough, brave, tenacious little fellow, who had a won- 
derful knack at doing things ; and who, when another boy once 
said to him — "You can't master that" — at once replied, 
" What does cant mean .? " And it would seem, as though to 
the end of his life, he never found out the meaning of '• can't." 

We know the friendly strife there was between the grand- 
father and the grandmother, with reference to the child's name 
— the one desiring to call him " Hiram," and the other 
" Ulysses," and how the matter was finally compromised by 
calling him " Hiram Ulysses." And we know how the name 
was, at last, changed by a blunder on the part of the member 
of Congress who secured his appointment, at the age of 
seventeen, as cadet at West Point, and who wrote the name 
" Ulysses S. Grant!' 

It seems almost as if the mistake was both providential 
and prophetic. For very early the soldiers discovered a 
significance in the initial letters of the first two names, which 
had a mysterious and powerful influence upon their minds. 
Singular, was it not, that " U. S." were abbreviations of 
United States, Uncle Sam, and uncofiditional surrender'? 
And it need not surprise us that when " United States " 
Grant or " Unconditional Surrender" Grant led the column it 
might be checked, but it could never be conquered. 

We are sufificiently familiar, no doubt, with young Grant's 
course at West Point. He was a faithful, but not what would 
be called a hard student. In a class of thirty-nine he ranked 
the twenty-first. He was obedient to all the regulations of 
the Academy ; and was distinguished for his manliness, per- 
fect truthfulness, freedom from profanity and vulgarity, and 
utter scorn of anything base and mean. He was the incarna- 
tion of honor — good-tempered, but would never give nor 
allow an insult. 



Grant was graduated from West Point on the 30th of June, 
1843 ; and on the next day was brevetted second lieutenant 
and assigned to duty in the Fourth United States Infantry, 
then stationed in Jefferson Barracks near St. Louis. Here 
he remained some two years ; but on the breaking out of the 
Mexican War in 1845, he, with his regiment, was ordered 
into Texas. He participated in most of the battles, fought 
under General Taylor, and was conspicuously brave at Palo 
Alto, Resaca de la Palma, Monterey, and at Molino del Rey, 
and finally took part in the storming of Chapultepec. He 
was in some fourteen different engagements. But peace was 
declared in 1848, and Grant returned North with the rank of 
Captain, having been twice brevetted for gallant conduct on 
the field. 

Captain Grant now made his way to St. Louis to take ad- 
vantage of a conquest he had achieved before being ordered 
on duty into Mexico. This was to be united In marriage to 
a young lady. Miss Julia T. Dent, who, as the wife of General 
Grant in the lowest as well as in the most exalted positions, 
has borne herself with such womanly fidelity and grace ; so 
meek and modest, calm and true, that she holds today, in the 
respect and love of the American people, a position only 
second to that of her illustrious husband. 

For two years he had his military home in Michigan and 
New York ; and the two years following was on duty in Cali- 
fornia and Oregon. Wearying, however, of the monotony of 
camp life at a military post, he resigned his commission, and 
left the army, July 31, 1854. 

For the next five years he occupied a little farm in the 
State of Missouri, southwest from St. Louis ; and in the 
winter cut and drew wood to the city market. He came in 
on the top of his load dressed in farmer's frock, his pants 
tucked into the tops of his boots, and an old slouched hat 
drawn down on his head. Simple, poor, unpretending — self- 
respecting, doing his work after a manly sort, and asking 
favor of none. 

In 1859 he entered into a partnership with his father, to 
carry on the business of tanning, in Galena, Illinois, under 
the firm name of Grant & Son. Here his annual income is 



lO 



said to have reached the munificent sum of $600 per year ; 
and here it was that, Mrs. Grant has recently said, they passed 
the happiest years of their life. How the simplicity and the 
ruooredness of the man remind us of Cincinnatus, who twice 
left the plow, that he might disperse the enemies of his 
country and save the Republic. 

On that fatal morning in April, 1861, Captain Grant 
walked into his office and read a telegram announcing the 
fall of Fort Sumter. Instantly walking around the counter 
on which lay his coat, he drew it on, saying, " I am for the 
war, to put down this wicked rebellion." 

The rest you know as well as I. What American has 
not learned the story of this magnificent soldier by heart .■* 
From that hour his life becomes historic, and a part of the 
imperishable renown of his country. 

Those who witnessed his achievments in war ; his works 
of peace ; his unflinching struggle with the only enemy he 
could not conquer, will hold him as the most remarkable 
figure of the century. Twenty-five years ago he was but a 
simple, honest tanner in a Western town which, but for him, 
would hardly be known beyond its own borders. He was 
content to live frugally, tan good leather, and meet the every- 
day duties of an American citizen. But the moment his 
country was in peril, he felt it his duty to offer to her de- 
fence the benefit of the education which she had conferred 
upon him. And from Belmont to Richmond all there was in 
him and of him was laid on his country's altar, Donelson 
and Shiloh ; Corinth and Vicksburg, and the Appomattox can 
never be mentioned without suggesting the highest military 
genius, and the finest qualities of generalship. Four years 
after leaving the tannery, he was wielding a million of men; 
sweeping the rebellious States from the James to the Gulf, 
and compelling the surrender of the last soldier of the Con- 
federate forces. 

Four years later he was called to the Presidency of the 
Republic, to the performance of the highest civic duties, for 
which he had had no training — four years later still to a 
second term of that great office — and as we look back to the 
leading measures of his administration, internal and foreign, 



II 



to the unexampled increase of the national wealth, and the vast 
extension of the national influence and prestige abroad, we 
say, what a man is this to whom the science of government, 
and the principles on which a nation's prosperity is founded 
and promoted are but intuitions ? Who shall say today 
whether he was greater, in war, or in peace ? But we will all 
say that he " is first in the hearts of his countrymen." 

"A braver soldier never couched the lance ; 
A gentler heart did never sway a court." 

But, friends, we shall miss our way in following to its 
end the life of General Grant, if we take for our guide the or- 
dinary lights and canons of human history. We find no thread 
that will lead us into the secret of this man's life, until we 
take the divine clue, and follow it up to the mind and will of 
God. Once admit that there is a " divinity in human affairs 
which shapes their ends," and we have the key to interpret 
certain singular men whose appearance in the world is a sign 
from heaven that a new epoch has begun, and that old things 
are ready to pass away. 

Men have occasionally come and gone who have con- 
tained the history of an age, or of a nation ; who have 
enunciated principles, promulgated laws, founded institutions, 
which have begotten and molded, and preserved the life and 
the character, and the power of generations, and of empires. 

The brevity of a human life sometimes seems unutter- 
ably sad, as in the case of the Chieftain who lies before us 
today. But on the other hand what a magnificent thing is a 
human life — rightly lived, and rightly filling out the measure 
of its opportunity for God and man ! 

In order to understand either Lincoln or Grant we 
must understand our own history. We must understand the 
divine forces and necessities which led to the formation of 
the American colonies, and afterwards to the founding of the 
American Republic. We need to comprehend that the 
deepest law of this world is a law of righteousness, which 
God has vindicated, and will vindicate, in history, to the end 
of time. 

Our fathers knew this, but they were faithless to their 
principles, and inserted into that magnificent work on which 



12 



the Nation was founded, the principle of human chattelhood. 
It was only a question of time : 

"The mills of the gods grind slow, 
But they grind exceeding fine." 

That instrument, which the original States ratified with 
orations and songs and bonfires ; with the ringing of bells 
and the booming of cannon ; with all the expressions of 
jubilation and thanksgiving which a grateful people could 
command, held the direst system of slavery that ever dark- 
ened the earth, and the bloodiest war of the modern centuries, 

God kept the Open Book, and when the day of reck- 
oning came. He demanded that we should pay down to the 
account of eternal righteouness, drop by drop, the blood of 
three hundred and sixty thousand human lives, and dollar by 
dollar, $6,000,000,000 of our treasure. In this awful reckoning 
Abraham Lincoln was God's mouth to proclaim liberty to the 
captives, and Ulysses Simpson Grant was God's right arm to 
smite the fetter from the slave. As we make him God's 
angel of wrath and of mercy to an offending people shall we 
understand why General Grant was born, and why he lived 
in a land and age like this. Such a man comes only when 
there is need of him, and when God has a place for him to 
fill. 

It is worse than idle to compare him with such military 
captains as Caesar and Napoleon — the one of whom de- 
stroyed the liberties of his country, and the other of whom 
attempted to destroy the liberties of Europe. Grant's arm 
was lifted only in defence of his country — to put down her 
enemies, to deliver her slaves, and to rectify her fundamental 
law which had built the central column of our temple of 
liberty on a base concealed with scourges and chains, while 
serpents writhed and hissed among the leaves which entwined 
its capital. 

The great soldier had no ambition but to deliver and 
save an imperiled country. That he did this, fifty millions of 
people, scattered from ocean to ocean, and from the St. Law- 
rence to the Gulf, confess today. 

Can we analyze and test the qualities of such a man, 
and find out the secret of his greatness and power } 



The attempt has been frequently made, but, as it seems 
to us, even in the judgment of the writers themselves, with 
no very satisfactory results. His career has been so ex- 
traordinary that one class of writers resolve it into some 
happy luck or chance ; while another class refer it to some 
subtle quality in the nature of the man, which defies detec- 
tion or definition. The mistake is not unnatural, and is one 
which will continue to be made, while history is written from 
a merely human stand-point. 

Without pretending to a keener insight into men and 
events, we cannot help the feeling that the investigation into 
General Grant has failed simply because it was pursued in 
the wrong direction. The investigators started out on the 
assumption that there was a mystery to be explored and some 
vast deep to be fathomed, in order to find out the hiding of 
his power. The result is, his simple and perfectly obvious 
qualities were overlooked in the effort to discover something 
unusual, exceptional, and remote. There was nothing, in 
General Grant which does not belong to human nature, and 
the difference between him and the ordinary man is, that he 
was a full man, rounded and complete in every faculty. His 
powers were evenly balanced, having nothing in excess, and 
so moving in harmony, and with prodigious strength. 

The average man is narrow, shallow, and ofttimes one- 
sided — perhaps the physical developed at the expense of the 
intellectual ; or both at the expense of the sensibilities ; and 
possibly all three at the expense of the will. In such a case 
the resultant outcome of the powers in action could only be 
feebleness, pettiness, and indirection. Two words we believe 
will explain General Grant, as they will explain all men who 
are great in character and great in action — these words are 
StrengtJi and Courage. 

It will be understood that we use these terms as imply- 
ing the utmost that they can hold, or cover, in a human being. 
And we apply the word strength to every department of 
man's nature — body, mind, heart, and will. We also use the 
word broadly, as indicating fullness of power in every faculty, 
and the harmonious blending and play of all. We have men 
of poetic temperament, eloquent men, brilliant men, logical 



14 

men ; men of metaphysical and speculative thought ; but no 
man will stand up colossal and grand among his fellows to 
receive their homage and their following who lacks the two 
qualities named above. 

Test the great characters which loom up along the ages 
and mark the line of human achievement and human prog- 
ress, and it will be seen that strength and courage, in the 
large sense, were their distinguishing qualities. We feel this 
instantly at the names of Abraham, Moses, Joshua, David, 
Paul, Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Knox, Edwards, and White- 
field among the worthies of the church ; Alexander, Caesar, 
Alfred, Charlemagne, Cromwell, Napoleon, and Washington 
among the founders of states and rulers of men. 

General Grant easily and naturally falls into this category 
of historic men. He was great unconsciously, and without 
effort. He took his place at the head of Americans, because 
nature had rounded out all his faculties in her large mold, 
and added to his character the weight and the force of un- 
flinching convictions. 

It is possible to have greatness in certain directions, 
where there is deficiency in some physical power, or in 
some mental or moral quality. But we will not have the 
great man without flaw, unless we have fullness and propor- 
tion and poise, throughout the combined and complete 
natures of the man. 

Physically, General Grant was as nearly perfect as a 
human being can be. Of medium size, sinewy, compact, 
tough, broad-chested, inspiration deep and full, digestion per- 
fect, he could do any amount of work, and readily recuperate 
from the severest fatigue. His admirable physique was 
strung with nerves of steel, rendering him calm in danger 
and equal to the strain of the desperate siege, or the bloody 
battle. This quality was shown when, only a little child, he 
fired off a pistol, and exclaimed in his glee — "Pick it again; 
fick it again." This carried him through all the years of the 
war, weiglited with cares and responsibilities which would 
have crushed or killed an ordinary man. But General Grant, 
after massing and manuoevring larger armies over wider 
spaces than any general of any age, came out of the war un- 



15 

broken in health, to enter upon the work of reconstruction, 
as soldier and President ; and finally to compass the globe, to 
be the world'' s guest ; to outride, and outstand, and outeat, the 
courts of the kingdoms. And when he came back to us he 
was the same son of nature, sound as a nut, his eye flashing 
as in battle and his hand steady as a child's, for he had gone 
the world around without tasting a drop of intoxicating 
liquor. 

His intellectual qualities were the fit counterpart of his 
physical. No man could more fully illustrate the Latin prov- 
erb, " Mens Sana in corpore sano." His perception, his reason, 
his understanding, and his imagination were large, keen, and 
discriminating, and so adjusted that they relied upon one 
another and sustained one another. They enabled him to 
plan a campaign or a battle with almost the precision and 
certainty of mathematical demonstration. 

Had his perception enlarged or distorted his facts, or had 
his reason reached its conclusions without a severe basis of 
logic, how easy it would have been to have so misled his 
understanding as to commit the saddest of blunders. But 
follow him from the time he received his commission of Cap- 
tain from the hand of Governor Yates, until he received the 
surrender of Lee at Appomattox Court House, and who will 
affirm that he made a military movement for the issues of 
which he had not thoroughly provided .'* 

His army was checked, but never defeated. He fixed 
his eye on the prize to be won, and never lost sight of it 
until it was within his grasp. It was no mere brilliancy of 
action — not the dash and rush and dan of the charge which 
won his battles, but the clear intellectual balancing of forces; 
the sheer weight and might of heroes who marched to victory 
when he led the way. 

He knew men, and he knew war, and weighed perfectly 
the moral and physical forces which enter into a battle. It 
was easy for him, therefore, in planning a campaign, to put 
himself in the place of his adversary, and, taking into account 
the object at which he aimed and the resources he had in 
hand, to think out logically, the combinations he would make. 
Having done this, he would then construct his plan so as to 



i6 



meet his antagonist point by point, and in the end defeat him. 
The result demonstrated the clearness of his intellect, and 
the soundness of his judgment. He eliminated, as far as 
possible, every element of chance from the game of war; he 
foresaw every movement and provided for every contingency, 
in such a way that surprise was almost an impossibility. 

It has been somewhat popular in certain quarters to 
speak of General Grant as inferior in military genius to some 
other leaders in the War of the Rebellion. If it be meant 
by this that some other men had more of abandon and of a 
headlong plunge and dash, it may be granted ; but he had 
what was vastly better, a sound military judgment, which 
enabled him to combine immense and long-protracted military 
operations, and to calculate results with nearly absolute pre- 
cision. 

Only an intellect of the broadest grasp and of the great- 
est clearness and accuracy could have comprehended and 
planned the almost infinitely various movements of the Union 
armies, which finally closed around the Rebellion and 
strangled it to death. It was an exhibition of pure intellect, 
which not only sets him among the greatest military captains, 
but among the greatest men of the world. 

If there could have been any doubt of this at the close of 
the war, his civil career has since dispelled it all. Twice 
called to the Presidency when our home affairs were most in- 
tricate and delicate, and when our foreign relations needed 
the wisest and most careful treatment, he so administered his 
high office as to command the respect of mankind. Not that 
he was endowed with infinite foresight and infinite wisdom 
— not that he was never deceived in men, and that every 
measure of his government was the best possible — but that 
he was z. patriot from the crown of his head to the sole of his 
foot, and that he so grasped the principles and the traditions 
and methods of the Republic that he guided its affairs with a 
rare fidelity and skill. 

We maintain that his views on finance, on education, on 
immigration, on the rights of citizens, and on the duty of the 
government to protect them, here and elsewhere ; his Indian 
policy of peace and good-will, and his strong, just, and digni- 



fied foreign policy, all prove him to be as broad and able and 
clear-headed in statesmanship as he was in generalship. 

If by statesmanship is meant the comprehension of the 
forces which enter into a nation's material, mental, and moral 
welfare, and the capacity to follow to the conclusion their 
logical results, then we claim that by a single act General 
Grant put himself above the wisest of American statesmen. 
That act was the terms he offered to Lee for the surrender 
of his army, written with pencil on a leaf of his order-book, 
amid the hurry and pressure of stupendous military opera- 
tions, in a few, clear, simple lines which solved at once the 
problem of peace, and the possible unity and fraternity of 
the American people. 

Let any one remember what Mr. Johnson and Mr. Stan- 
ton attempted to do, and what might have happened had this 
question been submitted to Congress for decision, and he 
will be made only the more sensible that we owe to the wis- 
dom of General Grant a restored Union and a reconciled 
people. Had not the passions of that mad hour been held in 
check by that calm, resolute will, no man can tell when 
blood would have ceased to flow, or when the people of con- 
tending States would have looked in each other's faces as 
brethren. But twenty years ago General Grant saw what we 
now see, and the generations to come will see even more 
clearly than we do, that this act stamps him as great in war, 
greater in peace, and greatest in the hearts of his country- 
men. 

Nevertheless, it is'quite the fashion in a certain circle to 
speak of General Grant as merely a military man, limited in 
scholarship, in the range of his reading, in the breadth of his 
thought, and in his capacity for affairs. In confirmation of 
this, we are referred to his inability, or indisposition for pro- 
tracted, popular address, and to his distaste for what is called 
literary work. He is a silent man, it is said ; less wise than 
he seems, and enjoys a dash over the road, or a chase across 
the country, more than he does the Atlantic Monthly or the 
latest novel. 

But what will these critics say of the articles recently 
published in the Century, and of that wonderful book of his 



campaigns composed and revised under great weakness and 
pain, while battling with fatal disease ? They forget that the 
glibbest men are ofttimes the shallowest, and that the most 
voracious book-men are frequently the weakest and the silli- 
est. They should know, also, that every healthy, robust soul 
lives near to nature, and loves the open country, and the fresh 
air, and the bounding steed which gives one the sense of a 
freer, larger life. General Grant was a child of nature, who saw 

"Tongues in trees; books 
In the running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and 
Good in everything." 

The time which common men spend in mastering other 
men's thoughts. General Grant spent in mastering and ma- 
turing his own. What he knew he had thought down and 
through and 02it for himself. His mental insight, pure and 
simple, unaffected by learned quirks and quibbles, went 
straight to the heart of a subject. Those who knew him best 
suspected least his lack of scholastic training. 

One who knew him intimately has said that had he 
made constitutional or international law a special study he 
could hardly have guided our affairs, home and foreign, more 
wisely than he did. His honest judgment and his thorough 
common sense simply reduced to practice certain broad prin- 
ciples of equity and justice, which were matters both of in- 
tuition and intelligence ; and the result was an administration 
as brilliant as it was strong and just. 

Test him by a comparison with the ablest men of his 
own cabinet, and does he suffer anything by the comparison } 
No one of them ever got the impression that his chief needed 
his advice in order to know how to proceed. It was a com- 
mon thing for him to ask the opinions of his cabinet in a 
doubtful matter, and then to announce his own decision in 
such a manner as to show that he had reached his conclusion 
by a thorough and independent study of the case. 

Test him, moreover, by his power to condense his 
thought into words that drop into language and become a 
part of the every-day speech of men, and it may be a question 
whether there is another man of his generation who has said 
so many things that will live. How much of the strength 



19 

and beauty and point of the orations and sermons and 
eulogies which will be pronounced on General Grant, today, 
would be wanting, if they were shorn of such sayings as 
these — "The only terms I have to offer are those of uncon- 
ditional surrender. I propose to move on your works at 
once." " I intend to fight it out on this line if it takes all 
summer." " Now is the time to drive them." " I have no 
time to bury my own dead, and shall advance at once." " Let 
us have peace." 

But the best thing waits to be said of General Grant, 
viz. : that his moral nature was the fit setting for his superb 
physique and his magnificent intellect. And we include in 
the term "moral nature" both the sensibilities and the will. 
There is an impression, quite general, we think, that he lacked 
the finer and gentler feelings of our nature. The mistake is, 
perhaps, natural, and arises from the fact that people judge 
him as a professional soldier. Whereas he was a soldier 
only when his country was in danger, and needed his defence. 
He hated war, and his whole nature revolted at its unutter- 
able atrocities. 

In that interview with Lee for the surrender of his army, 
he said, " I will not be responsible for the life of another 
man." But like the surgeon who probes the wound or am- 
putates the limb, he was compelled to inflict suffering for the 
sake of the health and the life of the Nation. The sacrifices 
which he was constrained to make were only such as the 
highest benevolence would choose, in order to the most 
beneficent end. Does not the Divine Benevolence proceed 
on the same principle .-' 

But, it is said, he is stern, hard, and unfeeling. Is he ? 
That impassable man who, without the quiver of a muscle or 
the change of a feature, looked on the slaughter of tens of 
thousands, could go to his tent and weep like a child over the 
fall of McPherson ; could go from cot to cot through the 
hospitals and lay his hand tenderly and gently on the head of 
his wounded boys ; could take a little girl on his knee and 
press her to his bosom, while gay women and glittering men 
were making the hours dizzy with the dance. 

Not a man of sympathy, do you say ? Look into that home 



20 



in Sixty-Sixth Street, New York, any day within the last nine 
months — into that darkened cottage on Mt. McGregor, and 
say, did you ever see domestic love and peace more sweet 
and pure and deep ? Where shall we match the affection of 
that father — his love for wife and daughter and sons? Do 
we forget when that daughter went forth from the White 
House, a bright and gleesome bride, how her iron father fled 
to his room and broke down in almost uncontrollable tears ? 
And the kindness which brooded over his household, while 
living, would shield it from pain to the end. 

That letter to Doctor Douglass, not to be shown his 
family until after his decease, reveals a heart which was as an 
ocean of tenderness and love. But that letter found upon his 
person after he was gone, and directed to his wife, must stand 
unmatched for simple pathos and undying affection. Hear 
him : 

" Look after our dear children and direct them in the 
paths of rectitude. It would distress me far more to think 
that one of them could depart from an honorable, upright 
and virtuous life, than it would to know that they were pros- 
trated on a bed of sickness from which they were never to 
arise alive. They have never given us any cause for alarm, 
on, their account, and I constantly pray they never will. 
With these few injunctions, and the knowledge I have of 
your love and affection and the dutiful affection of all our 
children, I bid you a final farewell until we meet in another, 
and I trust, a better world. You will find this on my person 
after my demise. 

''Mt. McGregor, July 9, iSSj." 

Will we, then, go on repeating that General Grant was a 
hard man, or will we confess that his heart was as tender as 
a girl's, and that his love passed the love of woman ? 

He was the soul of honor ; faithful in friendship, untar- 
nished in integrity, true in feeling, and generous and noble in 
impulse and action. He never violated a confidence, or 
betrayed the cause entrusted to his keeping. In the light 
that has radiated from the Grant home, within the passing 
months, we understand better than we did, the simple words 
of his incomparable wife : " Mr. Grant is as good as he can be." 



Absolutely, he seemed destitute of the little piques and 
passions and weaknesses and prejudices of ordinary men. 

" Sleep sweetly, tender heart, in peace. 

Sleep, loving spirit, matchless soul, 
While the stars burn, the moons increase, 

And the great ages onward roll. 
His memory long will live, alone, 

In all our hearts, as mournful light, 
That broods above the fallen sun 

And dwells in heaven half the night." 

From the hour he received his commission as captain of 
volunteers until as lieutenant-general of the armies of the 
United States the Confederate power lay crushed and crum- 
bled at his feet, his one ambition was to wipe out the Rebell- 
ion. To this end every man was spurred to his best. No 
finer magnanimity was ever seen than that which he ex- 
hibited towards his officers in high command. Jealousy was 
no part of his nature. No one rejoiced as he did over every 
laurel won by Sherman and Meade, Thomas, Sheridan, and 
the rest. Planning their campaigns and putting at their dis- 
posal every resource which the government could furnish, 
he was content to wait and watch behind his entrenchments 
in front of Richmond until the final issues brought to light 
the master-mover of the all conquering forces. 

And then, since the war, how he has disclaimed merit for 
himself, and declared that Sherman or Sheridan, or even others, 
might have done the work better than he. And, almost within 
the year, how bravely and royally he undertook to undo a great 
wrong, as he believed, inflicted upon General Fitz John Por- 
ter, twenty years ago — reopening and rearguing the question 
on military grounds ; putting himself in opposition to some of 
his warmest friends, and braving a settled public opinion. 
But he believed a great injustice had been done a brave sol- 
dier, and he had the courage to undertake its rectification. 

But while he was thus broadly and grandly magnani- 
mous, no weakness for friends could blind his eyes or pervert 
his judgment. But he demanded proof irrefragable before 
he surrendered a friendship or displaced a confidence. The 
public service and the public weal were supreme, and they 
never suffered because he insisted on retaining in com- 
mand or in office, incompetent or unworthy men. His will 



22 



was master of all his powers and severely held him to his 
country's needs. 

He was stern and impartial in discipline, and no man, 
however high in position, or controlling in influence, could 
brave it with impunity. It is well known, that up to the 
time when General Grant took command of the Army of the 
Potomac, it had had no commander who was strong enough 
to put every man in his place, and exact from him full and 
faithful service. But from the moment that army moved 
and fought under the eye of Grant every officer knew that to 
criticise or to oppose the commander, or to fail in efficiency 
or endeavor to do his best, would bring down upon him an 
iron hand that would crush him. 

In him were centered the strength and the courage and 
the purpose which saved the country. When others were 
agitated, he was calm. When others trembled for the 
result of a battle, he simply puffed his cigar, giving 
no sign of perturbation or alarm. When Buell, near the 
the close of the first day's fight at Shiloh, came upon the 
field with his reserves, and asked Grant what provision he 
had made in case of defeat, " I am not going to be defeated," 
said Grant. " But in case you should be," pressed the timid 
Buell. " TJiere" pointing to ' the boats in the river, was 
Grant's only reply. " But the boats would not take ten 
thousand men, and you have thirty thousand," said Buell. 
" When I retreat there will be boats enough to accommodate 
my army," was the reply. 

It was that terrible persistency of purpose which rolled 
the rebel army back upon Corinth the next day, and won the 
battle. It was the same clear grit which said to the note of 
Buckner — his old fellow student and warm personal friend 
— in command at Fort Donelson, "The only terms I have 
to offer are those of unconditional surrender. I propose to 
move upon your works at once." That reply won the Fort, 
and the surrender of twenty thousand men. 

And today. General Buckner is one of the pall-bearers at 
the funeral of General Grant ; and it was Buckner, who, it is 
said, last January when the fortunes of the Grant family were 
swept into irretrievable ruin, sent his old schoolmate and con- 



23 

queror his check of ten thousand dollars as a loan, so long as 
it might be needed. There were noble men on both sides ; 
but it was only the noblest of men who could have retained 
the respect and the love of the proud soldier whom he had 
humbled. 

The elements of General Grant's courage were twofold 
— intelligence and conviction. He knew and he believed. 
He saw clearly the end to be gained, and then as clearly 
passed in review the means necessary to its attainment. His 
courage was not the blind, rash impulse of the brute, holding 
on to its antagonist against whatever odds. On the other 
hand it held to its purpose because his hand held the forces 
which he knew would conquer success. 

He had an insight into men and their motives, and thus 
dealt with them rationally. His heroism, therefore, was per- 
fectly natural ; for no man will run away while he feels equal 
to his own defence, and that of the cause entrusted to his 
keeping. It is only when men see no way out of the laby- 
rinth, or the danger, that they lose their heads and begin to 
tremble. And because General Grant had a clear head and a 
sound judgment, he was never bewildered, and never lost his 
way. 

And when with the clear head we unite thorough moral 
purpose, we have the perfection of courage, the incorruptible 
and the unconquerable hero. And in the complete fusion of 
these two qualities, we have that rarest of characters which 
he exhibited so beautifully — simplicity, child-like modesty, 
self-forgetfulness, and unconsciousness of any ends but the 
good of men. 

And now what shall I say more } This man of deeds, 
and not of words, was not a thoughtless man. The currents 
of his life moved so deep that they were unobserved by or- 
dinary men, among whom he ofttimes sat silent, absorbed and 
apart. The weights which he carried in behalf of an im- 
periled country made him profoundly serious and thoughtful. 
Commodore Porter relates that after the capture of Vicks- 
burg. General Grant, with other officers in high command, 
came on board his vessel lying in the river. And while they 
were celebrating: the event with shout and song and wine, he 



24 

alone neither drank nor laughed nor spoke. The silent man 
seemed looking far away as if he would penetrate the mists 
and read the future of his country. 

We do not claim that there have not been other men as 
brave, as intelligent, as decided as was General Grant. What 
we claim is, that his great qualities were devoted solely to the 
welfare of his country ; that he fought battles only to put 
down rebellion and to restore the integrity of the Union — 
that when that end was accomplished he sheathed his sword 
and became the simplest of American citizens. He outranks 
the great men of his generation not merely on account of the 
fullness of his faculties, the clearness and unselfishness of his 
motives, and the supreme will that swayed him and held him 
to whatever he believed to be right, but because he was 
affected with no taint of personal ambition, such as has 
smitten and destroyed so many of our public men. The cry 
of " Caesarism " died in the throats of those who shouted it. 

The time was ready for this man, and the man was made 
for the time. He was one of those elect souls — 

" Who makes by force his merit i<nown, 

And lives to clutch the golden keys, 

To mold a mighty State's decrees, 
And shape the whisper of the throne. 
And, moving up from high to higher. 

Becomes on fortune's crowning slope, 

The pillar of a people's hope. 

The centre of a world's desire." 

But, friends, this will be an unfortunate day for the 
American people, if, from services like these, they gain the im- 
pression that General Grant was great simply, or mainly, as 
the first soldier of the age. He was greater as a man, and 
his military career was only a part of his greater manhood. 
He made mankind his brother. In Great Britain, in France, 
in Germany, in India, in China, in Japan, and in the islands 
of the sea, he was at home ; and men of every nation and sta- 
tion received him as one of their own. He was perfectly at 
ease in kings' palaces, for he was a man, and a king could be 
no more. Fashion and wealth and learning and power hon- 
ored themselves in rendering homage to him ; and best of all, 
and always, the common people saw and heard him gladly. 



25 

He saw good in every nation, and qualities which commanded 
his respect in every people. 

One of the three men who impressed him most while 
abroad, was the Viceroy of China, Li Hung Chang, who, he 
does not hesitate to say, was the equal of any man he ever 
met. General Grant was candid and strong enough to do 
justice to any one, and especially to a race whom we have 
counted unfit to live on the American continent. 

It is as a man, therefore, that we exalt him before the 
eyes of the American people — a man large enough to fill 
out the measure of human nature. His soul was wholesome 
through and through. He had no patience with pretence, 
or sham, or clap-trap. I know of no keener irony on shoddy 
and loudness than his expressed wish to have for his coat of 
arms a "pair of shirt sleeves." 

He was one of those full men who could have made him- 
self great along any lines of toil and duty. He excelled as a 
soldier, we believe, not because of special military genius, 
but because as a grandly endowed soul, he brought all the 
powers of his mind to the work of planning campaigns and 
winning battles. Those same powers put into any other 
work would have brought him success. As head of the Re- 
public during the years of the reconstruction and reconcilia- 
tion of the Union, we believe the future historian will place 
him among the greatest of the Presidents. 

He was great not in pride and aspiration and ostenta- 
tion ; not in wealth and learning ; not in the elevation of 
office, but great in that, though highest, he was the servant of 
all. He acknowledged allegiance to every law of honor and 
of right — he believed in the decalogue, in the golden rule, in 
the new commandment, and in the Sermon on the Mount. 

When he went South in 1880, and was tendered recep- 
tions along the way, they were accepted only on condition 
that the black as well as the white might take him by the 
hand. No wonder that race, freed by his sword and covered 
by his mailed hand while he guided the Republic, adore him. 
No hearts will throb with a deeper anguish today, and no eyes 
will shed hotter tears than theirs. For — 

" No sea swells like the bosom of a race set free." 



26 



General Grant had that great capacity of sensitive, 
ethical souls, a capacity of terrible wrath against wrong. 
That interview between the General and the great War Secre- 
tary, in regard to the arrest of Lee and other Confederate offi- 
cers, would be wholesome reading for those who are assuring us 
that his " ethical olfactory " was a little obtuse. The scene 
is thus described : 

" One morning word came to General Grant which led 
him to mount a horse at the door, and ride with break-neck 
speed to the office of Mr. Stanton. ' Good morning,' said the 
Secretary. ' Good morning,' returned the General. ' Mr. 
Secretary, I understand you have issued orders for the arrest 
of General Lee and others. I desire to know if such orders 
have been placed in the hands of any officer for execution.?' 
' Yes, I have issued writs for the arrest of all the prominent 
rebels, and officers will soon be despatched to execute them.' 
'Mr. Secretary, when General Lee surrendered to me at 
Appomattox I gave him my word and honor that neither he 
nor any of his followers would be disturbed so long as they 
observed their parole of honor. I have learned nothing to 
cause me to believe that any of these men have broken their 
promises, and I have come here to suggest that these orders 
be cancelled.' ' General Grant, are you aware whom you are 
talking to ? I am the Secretary of War.' ' And I am Gen- 
eral Grant. Issue those orders at your peril' — then turning 
on his heel he walked quietly from the office ; " but the orders 
were never issued. 

In fine natures it will always be found that a keen sense 
of personal honor will be accompanied by a thorough self- 
respect. In illustration of this let me read you a brief note : 

" JVe7u York, January 6, iSSj. 
"My Dear Sir: 

"Through the press and otherwise, I learn that you, 
with a few other friends of mine, are engaged in rais- 
ing a subscription for my benefit. I appreciate both the mo- 
tive and the friendship which have dictated this course on your 
part ; but on mature reflection, I regard it as due to myself 



27 

and family to decline the proffered generosity. I regret that 
I did not make this known earlier. 

" Very truly yours, 
" Cyrus W. Field, Esq." " U. S. Grant." 

Are these the productions of a man whose ethical sense 
is dull and heavy ? Have the critics themselves the ethical 
faculty ? 

We think it will be found that the larger and purer and 
simpler the soul, the nearer to nature it will be, and the more 
it will love little children, and be like little children. How 
touchingly this quality was exhibited in General Grant. A 
few years ago, when spending a little time in Washington in the 
family of General Beale, the children of the city suddenly 
became possessed with a desire to secure the autograph of the 
great soldier. Returning late one night from a reception he 
found scores of the albums of his little friends waiting his 
signature. Mrs. Beale said, "You are weary and worn out; 
don't write in them tonight. General." " Yes, I will," was the 
reply, " the children on their way to school in the morning 
will call for them, and they will be disappointed if they do not 
get them." And so the man who loved the little children 
wrote on until the last book held his name. 

But over all and finer than all was his profound sense of 
God. This great soldier, and greater man, died with his face 
to the skies. He never uttered that Name in vain, and it was 
at his peril that any one did it in his presence. He was too in- 
tensely human, and too profoundly serious to live without God. 
In that sick chamber the Word of God and the word of 
prayer were his daily delight. We may not judge him by the 
ordinary standards of church life — for his public cares and 
duties set him apart from the common life of men. 

The question to be asked is — Did he as Soldier, as 
President, as Citizen exhibit the spirit of Him who came 
down from heaven — did he carry into his great offices the 
charities of the gospel and the humanities of the Christian 
religion ? Had he any of the sensitiveness of the Christian 
consciousness .'' You remember a beautiful Sabbath morning 
last April when he was advised to ride in the Park, he re- 



28 

fused, saying : " The people will be praying for me in the 
churches today, and it would not be right." And only the 
Sabbath before he died he refused to take the little outing 
which his friends were anxious to give him for the same 
reason. 

By what standard shall we judge him ? I know of but 
one, and by that let him be measured : " If any man have the 
spirit of Christ he is his." " Love to God and love to man " 
is the sign and the seal. " By their fruits ye shall know 
them." Let his whole life be the witness. Let the country, 
for whose welfare he counted not his life dear, testify ; let the 
race he redeemed speak; let the Indian and the Chinaman 
come upon the stand ; let the heroic souls that followed his 
banner unto death rise up ; the voice is one, this man loved 
the human race. 

When a man's life represents charity, forgiveness, right- 
eousness, honor, and good-will to men — when it stands for 
the home, the church, the school, and the state — for the 
Sabbath and the Bible, for equal rights and equal laws — for 
liberty and security and peace ; when such a life is transmuted 
into a sentiment to quicken a whole nation — when it goes 
out into the great air, and, like the atmosphere, encompasses 
the earth and purifies the world ; when it throbs in the blood 
of mankind ; tunes the heart to finer feeling ; quickens the 
brain to juster, nobler thought, and empowers the will unto 
grander action ; when that life is one long waiting and watcJi- 
i?ig and sacrifice for the good of his country and the good of 
mankind, what shall we call it .-* If this be not Christian, 
what is it 1 

My last word shall be the tribute of Bryant to the Father 
of his Country ; but applying with equal beauty and aptness 
to the Saviour of his Country : 

" The wildest storm that sweeps through space, 
And rends the oak with sudden force, 
Can raise no ripple on his face, 
Or slacken his majestic course. 
Thus, mid the wreck of thrones, shall live, 
Unmarred, undimmed our hero's fame. 
And years, succeeding years, shall give 
Increase of honor to his name." 



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